There is a colony of parrots in Brownsville of several species. They are believed to be descendants of escapees from homes in the 1970s. A bunch of the Bay Area Birders decided to visit Oliveira Park to see them as they come in to roost for the night.
When we got there, there were several other groups of birders - all there for the same reason we were.
Here's part of our group, lead by the intrepid Janet Randall (far left), our birding guru.
The park is very popular with Brownsvillians. There were several soccer games going on and as it got darker, spotlights lit up the field. There are lots of palm and eucalyptus trees.
Shortly after 6pm we heard the first squawks and saw some fly overhead. With my little point-and-shoot camera and dimishing light, I wasn't able to get very good pics.
These were the best of the ones I took.
They love to roost in the eucalyptus. I took the next shot just to show how many roosted on the same tree. All during this was a cacophony of squawking.
These two were definitely a couple. They're red-crowned parrots.
They nuzzled each other a lot. Parrots are extremely intelligent. As Skip says, "they're as intelligent as a three-year-old that can fly and has a can-opener on its face".
We also saw yellow-headed parrots and red-lored parakeets.
There were probably 150 birds in all. It was really quite thrilling to see them.
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